SCO Says It Has No Plan To Sue Linux Companies 478
cadfael writes "SCO is reported in the Age as saying they 'Have no plans to sue Linux companies...' This seems to contradict the earlier statements of Chris Sontag. This story also points out how Canopy owns stakes in several other Linux companies, including Linux Networx wheich supplied the supercomputer for Lawrence Livermore Nat Lab. One begins to wonder if the reality of their situation has become clear to them?" Maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of the end of this mess.
Timeline of events? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't let our guards down just yet..... (Score:5, Interesting)
of COURSE they're not suing companies... (Score:5, Interesting)
They sue the users who can't afford legal costs and will settle just for the sake of avoiding legal hell, and SCO gets a nice precedent running and their stock improves yet further.
Maybe I'm too cynical?
Lawsuit I'd like to see (Score:5, Interesting)
They went after Martha Stewart for a hell of a lot less than this.
Not suing companies (Score:3, Interesting)
They worked? (Score:2, Interesting)
(Controlling?) Intrest. (Score:5, Interesting)
Something smells very rotten here.
SCO must die. (Score:2, Interesting)
If there is any justice in the world, they will be held accountable for all the crap they've said since the beginning.
Maintaining SCO compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
NOTE: This report hereby placed in public domain, use it as you wish, at your own risk!
Additional suggestions, detailed specific recommendations, comments, requested.
Obviously it is a concern to GPL software authors that they maintain compatibility with the SCO platforms, while SCO publicly abuses them, tries to get the GPL declared invalid, and while SCO profits from selling their software and integrating it into future releases of the SCO product line.
Software authors will be aware that breaking SCO compatibility may cause problems for SCO users - (although strictly speaking that is SCO's problem, not the software author(s)', unless the author(s) have some contractual relationship with SCO or SCO customers).
SCO needs support revenue (and new sales revenue) that may depend on GPL products, to fund their PR and litigation. Thus, software authors, who not obligated to support SCO, presumably might want to.
Therefore here is a list of things NOT to do, if you don't want to break SCO compatibility.
1. Don't refactor your code, rearrange files, move functions between files, and rename files more logically in the same release as one which contains accidentally contains one or more SCO incompatible changes.
If you do this, it would make it harder for SCO or their partners to re-introduce any "lost" code that was necessary to support the SCO's platforms. Obviously you wouldn't want that.
2. Don't accidentally remove SCO support in a series of stages, which overlap in time with a bunch of critical security or bug fixes, without making it clear at which stages you accidentally removed SCO support.
3. Don't accidentally remove any special fixes or work rounds for SCO platforms.
4. Don't depend on functions, which are not implemented or perform differently on SCO platforms. Especially don't depend on those functions in lots of different places in your product.
In particular avoid these functions:
(please help with this list - "list 4")
Known bugs in SCO products:
Unixware: accept() does not set the sa_family value correctly for the AF_UNIX family. See http://mail.python.org/pipermail/patches/2001-Augu st/005630.html [python.org]
Unixware: atan2() does returns pi instead of zero for atan2(0, x). See http://mail.python.org/pipermail/patches/2001-Augu st/005630.html [python.org]
5. Don't depend on compiler features that might not be available on SCO platforms. This is especially true if, as has been suggested may occur, new versions of GCC don't support SCO platforms.
In particular don't depend on these compiler features:
(please help with this list if and when GCC loses SCO support)
6. Don't put in messages that display only on SCO's platforms.
Avoid putting in code like (and especially not commenting):
#if defined(_SCO_DS)
#elif defined(__UNIXWARE__)
#elif defined(__USLC__)
#if defined( __STDC_VERSION__ ) && __STDC_VERSION__ == 199409
#else
#endif
#elif defined(M_UNIX)
#else
#endif
7. Don't remove support in your makefile for building the application on SCO's platforms.
8. Don't rename your functions and variables with names that conflict with SCO-spe
Even this statement is only a partial truth (Score:5, Interesting)
"No. SCO has never planned to sue Linux companies."
It should say "SCO doesn't plan to sue any more Linux companies." They've already sued a Linux company. I'll give you a hint: the company's initials are IBM.
Re:Timeline of events? (Score:5, Interesting)
e. Profit
which Darl and other SCO executives made by inflating share value through FUD. I wonder if they'll be left alone to enjoy $$$ after this saga is over.
They have no plans, buy they have no rights... (Score:2, Interesting)
And if this a move to be more friendly with angry Linux users. Too late.... No one will wants nothing about SCO.
politics (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SCO always tells the truth! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:10 million ain't that much (Score:5, Interesting)
What I want to see is IBM win, then go after SCO's assets (what few will be left) and press for criminal charges against its execs.
Whatever happens, after reading ESR's Haloween 9 yesterday, I don't think anybody should want to keep the OpenServer cruft...win it and then put it out of everyone's misery.
If they get a settlement from IBM (Score:3, Interesting)
Wordplay (Score:2, Interesting)
'As the Canopy Group, which has a stake in SCO, also has interests in several other Linux companies, SCO was asked whether it planned to sue all these companies. The answer was "No. SCO has never planned to sue Linux companies."'
Translation: "SCO has been told it had better not have ever planned to sue companies in which Canopy is involved."
'Among the companies in which Canopy is involved is Linux Networx, which has supplied a supercomputer to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; asked whether SCO would sue the laboratory, the company spokesperson said: "No. SCO has never made concrete plans to sue anyone."'
Translation: "Waitasec, it's a Canopy group company, right? Nope, not suing them then."
Note it's "never planned to sue Linux companies", not any Linux companies. I bet my leftie that with "Linux companies" they mean some subset of Linux companies in general.
Also, not having concrete plans probably only means they've not dared put anything on paper yet.
I'm paranoid? Ah, you're with them aren't you?
Re:Australia only? (Score:2, Interesting)
You could be right. However I' ve noticed that stories about SCO have been braking first in The Age & Sydney Morning Herald (both the same company, just different cities) a bit. More than other /. stories anyway. Furthermore they are in house articles (living here you see a lot of articles that are just reprints form US media outlets).
All this suggests to me that someone at SCO's PR firm here in OZ is a friend of some jorno at Fairfax (parent company of The Age & SMH). I could be totally wrong. However personal friendships do make a difference in the PR/media relationships, well that's what my friend in PR tells me (I know, I know, but I knew her years before she went into PR and if you saw her you would remain friends too ;)
- EBH
Article crashes opera? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:of COURSE they're not suing companies... (Score:1, Interesting)
For one thing the RIAA seems to be doing random enforcement. They claim it is the worst violators but I beleive it may be entirely random. This could be legal. When software priracy rings are busted they usually try to find the worst offenders. Much of the time it is just a matter of prosecuting who can be caught in the act.
But with SCO we have a case where the company looks like they may choose to go after the easy targets. SCO only need head over to NetCraft. If SCO goes after the individual user with no resources and avoids going after the higher profile and larger companies who would have more Linux workstations and therefore should be liable for much more in the way of damages, I would think a judge would see through it. It would be obvious that SCO is just trying to go for the quick and easy win to set a precendent.
Well anyway my advice for any small linux based businesses is if SCO takes legal action against you be sure to shout it for all to hear. Some people from FSF, Redhat and IBM just might be interested in not letting such a dangerous precedent be set.
SCO is done, we have lost. (Score:3, Interesting)
Who will own the SysV code base? (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly, if IBM prevails (as most of the OSS community predicts) and is awarded huge damages, IBM may wind up owning the SysV code base after liquidation of SCO.
Can IBM use this power to make life difficult for the other vendors? Could IBM, for instance, drive HP off of HP-UX and SGI off of Irix? If so, where do they go? Do they join IBM in Linux or do they give IBM the finger and release a *BSD variant?
Re:The real question is: How do I short SCOX? (Score:1, Interesting)
"You cannot sell SCOX short"
I presume they have no shares.
I sold the few I had left from Caldera
at 10 & change a couple weeks ago. Still glad I did.
Re:Timeline of events? (Score:4, Interesting)
The bottom line = Stock Manipulation (Score:1, Interesting)
Look at how many SCO execs have been exercising options in the 60 cents to US$2 range and then immediately dumping it at the current market price. I hope some of these fucks go to prison for stock manipulation when this is all over.
They're not running for the exits, they're taking the Concorde....
Letter to linux customers gone (Score:2, Interesting)
SCO has apparently removed their
letter to Linux users from their web site.
SCO's Red Hat Defense - Help Break It (Score:2, Interesting)
At GROKLAW [weblogs.com] there is speculation that this is the start of an attempted defense to the Red Hat suit.
It's certainly an odd move, as only days ago, SCO said "We are in the process of contacting them about coming into compliance and taking a UnixWare license from us. If they refuse to do so, we will sue them directly and see them in court [eweek.com]", and apparently claimed to have three groups working on identifying and approaching Linux users, plus were preparing to take a Linux user to court [cbronline.com].
As this really does seem like the beginning of an attempted defense to Red Hat [redhat.com]'s law suit. It would seem like a good idea for the community to collect as many examples of SCO's legal threats as possible - especially to Linux companies and Red Hat in particular - and post them - as well as make Red Hat aware of SCO's latest PR spin, and all the contradictory evidence in their prior actions.
Don't believe everything you read (Score:1, Interesting)
Timing of scox web-server problems interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Scos web-server goes down (scox blames ibm backed linux community).
3) Scox web-server is back up - but changed, lots of scox claims now missing.
4) Archieved claims are missing - can't be found with serch engines.
5) Scox is now saying: "we were never going to sue anybody."
Desperate little scam. Will it work?
Stowell 'clarifies' SCO position (Score:2, Interesting)
Blake Stowell, director of public relations at SCO, told the INQUIRER late today: "Just because we aren't "planning" to sue Linux companies doesn't mean we won't. [...]
Also, just because we are saying that we won't sue Linux companies doesn't mean that we won't sue Linux customers".
My conjecture is that at this time they can't afford the retainer to Boise et al to undertake any new litigation.
An alternate theory is based on the fact that their "letter to Linux users" has indeed disappeared from www.sco.*: perhaps the pseudo-softening of their position is the result of a cease-and-desist order.